He was hiding from the police on a high seat in a field: two weeks after his escape, a tip from the population has apparently brought the decisive lead to the convicted sex offender from preventive detention in Brandenburg an der Havel.

The man was accompanied by judicial officials and was able to escape in a Berlin shopping center at the Memorial Church. Since then there has been a nationwide search. The police had access north of the city of Nauen near Berlin.

The emergency services met him exhausted on the high seat, as a police spokesman said. In their investigations, the emergency services have been concentrating on a search area around Nauen for days, where the person being searched used to live. As the police department west announced, an increased search pressure and a targeted operation after a citizen's tip led to the arrest.

"The escaped was increasingly isolated by the visible and covert police measures and put in a position from which he could then be arrested without resistance," said the head of the search measures, Lars Brückner, according to the statement. Target investigators, sniffer dogs, drones and a helicopter were also used for the search. After his arrest, he was taken to the Brandenburg an der Havel prison.

imprisonment for manslaughter and sex crimes

On Wednesday two weeks ago (February 15), the 64-year-old, who had been sentenced to a long prison term for manslaughter and sex crimes, fled. He was given permission to go to Berlin, accompanied by two law enforcement officers. In the Europa Center near the busy Kurfürstendamm, they let him out of sight for a short time, according to the Ministry of Justice.

The man has been in preventive detention in Brandenburg an der Havel since 2017. The purpose of preventive detention is to protect the population from particularly dangerous offenders who have already served their sentence. The prerequisite for the order is that psychiatric experts continue to classify the perpetrator as dangerous. But they are entitled to an exit.

Justice Minister Hoffmann had defended the trip to Berlin in the state parliament in Potsdam and said there was a duty to prepare those in preventive detention for a life in freedom. She referred to a report from April 2022, in which the man was not classified as so dangerous that he would flee and commit serious crimes. However, the circumstances of the flight have a political aftermath and should be an issue in the legal committee of the state parliament.